Thought Leadership

Digital Marketing Skills for the Modern Age.

Digital marketing today requires a very diverse skillset; as the scenario is evolving all the time, so is the skillset of a digital marketer. One might even say that the most important skills for a digital marketer are openness and being able to learn quickly.

With this post we want to give our contribution to the ongoing discussion on the web and social media. Here is our idea of the business-specific digital marketing skills .

SEO

Once a standalone skill, SEO is now an essential part of digital marketing. Your website must be a favourable environment for bots to crawl and index and for humans to visit and enjoy. To achieve this you need advanced skills in all SEO areas: technical, on-page, UX and linkbuilding. If your website is not optimised as above, you won’t receive the quality traffic you need and your digital marketing efforts will be frustrated; it is as simple as that.

Driving conversions

But it’s not simply about web traffic. Traffic alone is “vanity metrics”; you could have tonnes of traffic from the wrong sources and this would bring no value to your business. The role of the digital marketer is to create the conditions to get traffic from the people who are interested in your products or services. A digital marketer must be familiar with techniques which drive engagement and conversions; in many cases, digital marketing is actually a form of lead generation itself. This is not only about creating great web content but also creating clear paths to conversion in your website.

Content marketing

Create targeted content which brings value to your audiences and they will visit your website and social media, become engaged and interact with you. Creating content is no longer a separate sector belonging to copywriters; the digital marketer must be able to deeply understand content marketing and targeting to give advice and lead in the production and scheduling of great content across all channels.

Social Media

Unfortunately, many businesses approach social media marketing as if they were using their personal profile but there is a big difference between using social media for marketing and for fun. Every digital marketer should know this well.

Video and podcasting

Video and podcasting are the last frontier in the digital marketing world and they are only going to grow. They are a way to connect with your audience on an emotional level which has a great power to advocate brands and push targeted messages. They should be part of the skillset of any digital marketer.

Online advertising

Online advertising can be many things and it is impossible for anyone to be an expert across all of the systems and techniques. However online advertising (AdWords, Social Advertising, Video ads, mobile, apps…) is still one of the best ways to increase visibility and conversions and no digital marketer should ignore this. The challenge is to find the right channel to tell your story, but this is a powerful story-telling method.

Analytics

Perhaps the most challenging of all digital marketing skills, and the challenge is double: measuring and reporting. On one hand you need the skills to set your analytical tools so that they measure exactly the data you need to assess your strategy. On the other hand you have to be able to present data so that it supports the story you need to tell your clients and team who normally won’t be interested in large sets of data, but will be trying to understand if the strategy is working. Your digital marketer’s most important skill, here is using data to tell the story of your campaign to non-marketing people. A crucial skill if you want to align with your internal teams, win and retain business.

If you would like a digital marketing strategy which will bring valuable traffic and conversions to your business, get in touch for a free consultation.